Devil's Beat
by Telaka M
Summary: A chance encounter in a club one night leads Aubrey on a whirlwind exploration of self-discovery and unconventional love.
1. Wanna Dance Pretty Girl?

I don't know if you can call any Dance Central fan fiction an AU. What little you know of each character from the games alone give almost no (if any really) back story. It's personalities that have been built for DC. But how any of the characters ever got to know each other really is up to yourself I suppose.

That said, I'm taking huge liberties with this story. And I'm not apologizing for any of them.

If you've stuck with me this far, and you're planning to keep going, then I really hope you enjoy the ride. This story is getting a T rating, but be sure to check at the start of each chapter for particular warnings, because it's going to graduate to M material more than a few times in the future.

And drop a note to tell me what you think!

Good luck.

Telaka

.

**Chapter One**

_Wanna Dance Pretty Girl?_

_._

Goad the night. Ask for a devil's fate and shake hands with that ugly future. We owe our wretched pasts nothing because they will never pick up those calls again. _You owed that man nothing._

She pulled her socks a little higher, tugging with absent-minded force so they would cover her calves_. _Her long torso framed by a pair of rose-red braces slung loosely over her shoulders. The fresh blue silk of the blouse was foreign, lush, easily persuaded apart where her breasts sat in a half-cup bra.

_Are you asking for something? A black checkmark struck upon your adult life? Do you want them to forget everything you have become? Do you want to forget yourself?_

She waved a hand over the dresser, fingers twitching indecisively. Client lists and lunch dates and post-it notes with times, quotes and doodles of love hearts and cats, all strewn over the wood alongside spilled make-up and Parisian perfumes and emboldening costume jewellery. Some of it – the jewellery – she hadn't worn for months, dare be it even ever at all. Gifts from admirers and friends, and zealous associates who thought business and reality were one and the same thing. _Poor lambs._

She decided on just a quick spray of perfume. The wind outside was beginning to pick up, and the streets would be quieter tonight for it. Summer was passing, this the first week they'd had rain and cool nights. People would be realising they had less money than they thought, now that the sun had cooled and the celebrations of the long days ended. The dance halls and the sordid lounges and the long bars would be crowded, but they wouldn't be desperate with over-capacity. She would be able to move around, to drink without it spilling by someone else's idiotic accord. She would be able to hear the other girls talking and she would be able to stay till closing without wanting to murder more individuals than was reasonable or even necessary.

She used to know all the tricks, at least. It was her job once, and not too long ago, to understand these bodies and minds who passed through the night and danced in the dark. But this night was full of selfish resent, self-centered reasoning; _forget the man, remember yourself, forget yourself._

She left her coat behind and strode into the evening bidding _hello to you, devil._

…

Together they jumped the cue and strode through the dark halls, cut through the smoke and descended straight onto the dance floor like a free fall directed only by the music.

She knew Taye in so much as she knew she liked her. And though Aubrey led them to the floor, it was Taye who was emboldened to bark at the people, and then laugh when the crowds parted angrily for them.

There was nothing for them in those first moments but to dance. No better way to show the world you had stopped caring than by surrendering to a bodiless entity like music. A beat that jumps into your bones and possesses your core, and from it you steal pure joy, and ignorance, and you forget.

Aubrey moved with sin-like pride; a high head and elbows out, eyes closed, hair loose and mouth agape. She stole the space and dared anyone to come near, dared with every time she beat her foot into the floor, or swung her arms, or jutted her hips. Taye was gone to another corner and if they met up again at all tonight it would be purely by coincidence. Each had their own agendas to fulfill, and personal wars to wage.

Once the first heady wave of music passed, and lulled to a dull roar, Aubrey turned her back to the floor and headed to the bar. She ordered a water, turned back around, and took stock. It was a generous expanse of floor on this opening level. Then, to each side East and West, a string of tables and padded couches built into the long walls, and upon those tables danced the girls, and sitting in front of them the boys wishing they could touch; the oldest of our lasting professions. Above and all around was a balcony, with the DJ as lord and more dancers and some cages, for more girls to work in. A regular public ratio of around three women for every one man. Ample security with a heavy focus on the tables. Some of the girls on them frighteningly young, but nothing that surprised Aubrey.

She watched them for a while, switching out, changing tables, coming and going and always smiling. Though if anyone believed those smiles, then more fool them. Dressed, it seemed, as each unto their own. Some would disappear through locked doors once when they were done, and others would meander on the floor with the music, emboldened and drunk and well paid.

Then, as the beat changed, as Aubrey's heart once again raced with it, as she made to put down her glass and join the fray once more, she got caught.

It was out of grey shadows, from the very back of the room, that across each table a singularity in leather boots approached. A ripple of dissatisfaction threw each working girl off their stride and like dominos they stopped one by one and also looked.

She went by on long legs, crossing each gap between the tables like there was no gap at all. Bare, freckled skin until half way up the thigh, and even then it was just a pair of cotton shorts that managed to show off the yellow underwear beneath. A midriff covered by a loose sleeveless tee, bright yellow too and emblazoned with the number 59 in ocean blue. A black bra clearly showing. Wild, unkempt hair thrust into a careless bun and an assault of bay-brown bangs kept in check by a bleach-white cotton headband.

Each girl she passed she grinned at, baring straight teeth or flashing her tongue jovially. She walked across the tables like she was strolling across a sidewalk. But as each girl moved to let her pass, Aubrey felt it akin to watching a beast ascertain its dominance over its land.

She came down in one stride and paid no attention to the boys who called drunkenly, stupidly after her. Security nodded nonchalantly at her passing, and as she came abreast to the bar a tender threw her out a wink and a bottle of cold amber beer.

"Not a bad beat tonight."

They were shoulder to shoulder. She had moved again, like a cat, and now stood by Aubrey's arm, and she didn't bother to look her in the face.

"Want to dance?"

Aubrey frowned, tried to walk away without being forced to say something, but the other woman put her shoulder out and stopped her. There was a glean of sweat on her skin, and a slight breathlessness in her voice, like she had been running.

"Don't be shy now, pretty girl."

She looked at Aubrey then, and cut down the auburn's glower with a grin almost wider than her own face could manage to pull for her.

"Lighten up, jeeze! Don't wanna dance, fine. Maybe I can get you a drink? Larry's tossing me out free ones tonight apparently."

"Maybe you can just get out of my way."

The other woman stayed very still, but the grin never faded, and her hazel eyes danced under the roving lights of the hall.

"What's up; don't like girls?"

Aubrey lifted her hand and pushed it against the woman's warm, bare shoulder. And in that moment she shivered, stopped this time by an almost insistent need to supress such a sudden and nameless desire that she thought she would convulse.

The woman just laughed.

"Come on, I think we should dance."

...


	2. Send You To The Rooftops

Remember kids… It's only cool for fictional people with not real lungs to smoke o_o

**Chapter Two**

_Send You To The Rooftops_

…

They ended up on the roof, at first spiralling away from each other, drawn apart by their own separate desires, for the smell of the city and the cold air of the bruised black sky.

Had she been drinking? Or had this devil of a woman simply hypnotised her, sedated her defenses and revealed her to be something of herself so much more exposed and raw than she could bare to handle for much longer.

She sat down on top of an air vent, the woman with the cotton shorts and the sweat band and the messy brown hair, and pulled out a small tin box and a garish plastic lighter that had been tucked into the side of her bra. Her fingers were long, with clean, pedicured nails and bruised knuckles. She pulled a sheet of filter paper from the box and began to sprinkle loose tobacco into a well-fashioned line down the middle. Then she rolled, licked, and lit up.

The ash-white smoke that tumbled from her nose twisted around and climbed back up her long, dark face, over her deep set eyes and tall forehead, through her hair and then back into the atmosphere. She watched Aubrey carefully, sitting with her forearms on her knees, her back hunched and her shoulders down.

What had they been doing all this time while the night had been passing by around them? _Just dancing, Aubrey. And you enjoyed it. For the first time in years, you actually enjoyed it._

The woman suddenly jumped, grinning again and holding out the long, wry arm that carried the hand with the cigarette in it. "Sorry, you want a drag?"

Aubrey blinked, like the proverbial deer, and caught herself leaning tensely against the heavy metal door they'd emerged from.

"No," she answered firmly. "I got over all that nonsense when I was fifteen."

The woman laughed, shrugged, seemed unfazed and kept smoking.

"What is your name?" Aubrey heard herself ask, though she wanted to steal her own curiosity back as soon as she heard it sail through the air.

The woman smiled a little more softly, put down her cigarette and stretched her back into a deep arc. Aubrey could hear her spine cracking. "It's Emilia, now."

"Now?"

"Ha… Tell me yours."

"I'm… It's Aubrey."

Emilia nodded. "Pretty name. It sounds French."

Aubrey pushed herself away from the door, tucked her hands under her armpits and kicked her feet, getting dust on her red pumps. "It is. My mother, she was. French, that is."

Over their heads a crow sang, passing by in a lazy glide and sewing easily through the currents of night air. Aubrey watched it, could barely stand to look at the other woman whose hazel gaze had hardly left her since she'd invited her to dance.

She stood up then, flicking the stub of her smoke carelessly to the ground, and walked over to Aubrey, slowly, like she was approaching a skittish animal.

"I haven't seen anyone dance like that in a long time. Not here, in this place. People get here, they just go stupid. For the girls, for the drink. No one listens to the beat, and everyone just wants to screw. Everybody's forgotten what the music actually is, what it's really for. Except you."

She stopped at an arm's length from Aubrey and leaned against the door now with her arms crossed. She wasn't grinning anymore. She was watching. There was a gentle furrow in her brow, a look of sheer curiosity shinning in her eyes, with puzzlement and wonder abound.

"You came here with another woman."

Aubrey frowned, taking a step back on the asphalt. "A friend, yes. _Just_ a friend."

Emilia laughed quietly, pushing an errant of hair back from her eyes. "I know, I know. I watched her greet her boyfriend. And I watched her smile after you. She seemed happy for you, to be here."

Aubrey turned a half step, began walking away from Emilia, towards the middle of the roof. "She worries too much about me," she admitted, almost as if to herself. "She's happy with her man, and she's worried that I'm not."

"You're with someone?" A very casual question, like she cared nothing for the consequences of the answer.

"No. Not… not anymore."

Emilia smiled again.

"You won't dance some more with me again, here?"

Aubrey stopped, turned back to Emilia and frowned at her like she was looking down at the words of a moron. "No," she stated, blankly.

Emilia pushed herself away from the door, a grin slowly building on her pale, tea-coloured lips again. She walked towards Aubrey once more, face tilted down, eyes burning with more curiosity, endless wonder.

"Are you afraid of me?"

Aubrey's head lifted and her shoulders stiffened, her nostrils flared. "No."

"But you don't know who I am, and you don't know enough that you feel like you're in any sort of control, certainly not of me. You're not sure what to say to throw me off, and I think that's the one power you possess that you value the highest. Being in control of people, being able to keep them away with just a look, a word. Maybe it's part of your job. Maybe it's a necessary part of your life, and I apologise for not being afraid of you. But really, I don't think you mind all that much, now that I'm standing right here in front of you, and I'm close enough to kiss you…"

Standing so still and so close, Aubrey was suddenly struck by the fact that she was a bit taller than this other woman. That, although she was toned, she was also very slim, a little flat-chested, and that underneath her astonishing hazel eyes were heavy dark bags of fatigue.

"You know, I hate this place," she confessed with all the sincerity of a berated child. "Made me richer than I ever thought a girl like me could get. But I would run away in a heartbeat, if I had anywhere else to go."

Aubrey felt a hand wrap around her hip gently, and a cold thumb brush against her warmer skin under her silk blouse. Again the woman's touch overwhelmed her, like she was an animal being grabbed by the scruff of her neck. Emilia moved a little closer, just very slightly at any one time, like she was reading tiny signals that Aubrey herself was not aware she was giving. And yet, Aubrey did nothing to move away just now.

Their hips met, and Emilia very carefully put her other hand on the small of Aubrey's back, under her shirt, so that she had her embraced. She looked up, into her ocean-green eyes, and saw uncertainty, and worry, but also wonder.

"Would it be alright if I kissed you, now that we're here like this?"

Suddenly a crow cawed above them. Aubrey jumped, throwing Emilia back, who stumbled on her heels and had to hop to stop herself from falling back.

"I'm… No, I'm leaving. This is ridiculous. I'm not some bi-curious freak for you to get off with. I don't even know who you are! Stay away from me, I swear, and do not follow me home or I will call the police."

Aubrey shook her head and stormed across the roof, kicking dust in her wake as she headed away with her eyes firmly down on the ground. She could feel her pale cheeks flushing furiously. She grabbed the door and disappeared through it without another word. And as she ran down the stairs she began to curse herself, for not going back.

...


	3. Coffee and Boxes

I just watched the last episode of Doctor Who. Which means I haven't proof read this one like a million times, because feelings are stopping me from doing anything. Ever again.

I have been drawing a little more though... (link to tumblr is on my profile page).

.

**Chapter Three**

_Coffee and Boxes_

_._

She woke up with an acidy squall in her stomach and remembered suddenly, like a bemused idiot, that of course she had been drinking, all bloody night long. The drinks had been free, as promised, and it hadn't hit her in the terrible way that alcohol always does with such vindictive glee until around halfway through the long walk home. But now it was undeniable, all that consumption, with the evidence churning around in her gut and squeezing her bladder.

She hopped to the en suite on aching feet and relieved herself with immense satisfaction while the cool air of the bathroom quelled her flushed cheeks and dry eyes a little. She groaned out loud, tilted her head back and sat perfectly still on the toilet for what felt like an eternity, just waiting for the world to stop spinning.

Then a recollection hit her. Of coffee. And Taye.

"_Shit_…"

She sprung up, throwing off the blue blouse and the red bra that she had passed out in, dashing back into her bedroom naked and angry, looking for normal, bearable clothes that she could hide herself in while going to meet Taye for coffee, which she was convinced she was now too late for.

A pair of deathly skinny jeans, and a French silk, pearl pink shirt, and a gold and white cotton headband which she scrapped back her mountainous head of auburn hair with. Comfort, where clothes were concerned, was a very relative term for Aubrey.

She grabbed a pair of modest cream-pink heels from under her massive bed, her phone from her dresser, her keys from the floor, and did a 360 sweep looking for her wallet.

"Shit…"

Another recollection arose in her throbbing mind. A drunken anger, and cursing to herself in the living room when she'd come home. Hot, angry tears in her eyes and her mascara stinging. She hadn't had her wallet with her when she'd gotten home. Instinctively she knew, the woman had stolen it from her.

Aubrey went back into the bathroom. She took a deep breath and ran handfuls of ice cold water over her face and carefully scrubbed last night's make up from her pale, irritated skin. Suddenly she was hesitant about going out. She felt overwhelmingly burdened by personal shame.

Then a vibration cut through her melancholy and she cried out as it ripple through her backside. She yanked her phone from her back pocket and answered it breathlessly.

"Girl, get your ass to this damn coffee place now or so help you I'll murder you in your sleep tonight."

Taye hung up without waiting for a response. Aubrey caught herself in the mirror smiling slightly, but still with a heavy burden of self-consciousness she left the apartment.

….

Taye bought her a latte and said nothing about paying her back. They sat outside, taking advantage of a last defiant burst of summer warmth that had graced the early part of the afternoon. Aubrey had been half an hour late, and Taye had only been half as annoyed as she'd expected her to be. They were at a community hall located conveniently by a subway station just shy of the city's main centre, and drinking from the obligatory coffee chain store that had opened by its side. Taye's little sister was inside the hall subjecting herself to a ballet class that she attended every weekend with religious vigor. They had an hour before she was to come back out and meet them, and then the conversation would have to turn vanilla.

"I think she stole my wallet," Aubrey confessed with a shy grunt, allowing the steam from the coffee to nip her eyes. "And the saddest part is, I'm not surprised she did."

Taye took a long drag from whatever behemoth concoction of whipped cream and liquefied chocolate she had ordered, and looked at Aubrey with carefully measured pity.

"Aubrey. You know who that girl is, don't you?"

Aubrey took a sip of latte, measured and quiet in her consumption. She shook her head once, not willing to play coy on this afternoon.

"She's the one in charge of the dancers working at Tan Corp. Top dog, undisputedly so for over a year now. They tell me if you've got a pretty penny sittin' in your pocket then she's yours for the night. But she's a mean-ass dancer, that one. First time I ever saw her she was on the DJ's balcony, telling him what to play; queen of the whole God-damn night that time. The girls are terrified of her. But she looks after them. Aint been an incident against any one of them since she took charge. And she only deals with men who can afford what they want from her. Otherwise… yeah she prefers the companionship of ladies. It's a heartbreaking fact for many to be told."

Aubrey's nostrils twitched, and she blew away the steam from her face, watching the pale vapours evaporate into the stilled air of the end of summer. She wasn't looking at Taye, but listening with ferocious intensity while she watched the rest of the world move along with its day. Ordinary people surrounding them, with their own conversations and banal lives, shopping bags in the cruxes of their arms, vagrant children running by their sides, birds flying overhead and cars rushing to nowhere she knew. Taye's words seemed to make little sense, like she was being told a story in a flourishing foreign tongue. Her eyes glazed, and then welled. She put her head down.

Taye put down her drink. Without words, she came around the table and put her head on Aubrey's shoulder, and her arm around her back.

"Aubrey, we talked about this…"

"Angel, and I…"

"I know, honey. You were together for a long time and I can't believe I'm gonna say this, but he was a good man. A sweet guy with no more backbone than a wet sponge. But in the end you feel the way you feel, and it's over now for a reason that you gotta be more honest with yourself about. You aint a freak, and you aint cheating anyone for feeling this way. I told you that already.

"But that girl… Emilia. She is _not_ the place to start. She is a whole world of trouble and heartache and she is not for people like you."

Taye lifted her head from her friend's shoulder and Aubrey sighed, leaned back and forced herself to laugh. Taye sat back down, her hands on the table.

"Who says it's got to be anyone, Taye? What's wrong with us being alone?"

Taye smiled and shrugged. "Nothing. There's nothing wrong with living for ourselves."

Aubrey put her hand on top of Taye's, and left it there while she slowly finished her coffee.

…

She rode the subway back to her neighbourhood. She stopped by the bank and cancelled her cards and ordered new ones, taking out enough dollars to last her the week after having to spend half an hour proving she was who she was. She stuffed the cash into her bra. She'd need a new ID and library card. There were other things. Photographs and scraps of paper, and stickers and her lucky coin. But she couldn't replace those. They would have to pass into memory, eventually into obscurity.

Some clouds came in from the north, and summer's tail relented once again between the back legs of autumn. There was a breeze and it was chill, so Aubrey pointed herself home.

The building to her apartment was beautiful. Expensive and well maintained; she had worked hard for it, for years. It was her haven, her very own, her home.

Angel was standing outside when she arrived back.

He cut nothing short of a distinction in this otherwise reserved neighbourhood of black dresses and grey ties. Dapper and shameless in a crisp white fedora, a soft pink shirt and diamante studded jeans. Against the breeze he wore a tailored white sports jacket wrapped up at the collar with a long, pink cotton scarf. He'd tinted his hair recently, and she was sure he was tanning at the beds again. She'd always begged him not to.

He spotted Aubrey spotting him, and his eyes widened. Then she spotted a box at his feet with a messy black scrawl on one side, her name written in black ink. He'd come to give her her things back.

She crossed the road with casual grace, her chin high but her eyes decorous. This would not be a fight, if they were only laying down their swords for the sake of finality.

"_Chica_…" he smiled, though he kept himself quite still, his feet close to the box on the sidewalk.

"Angel," she nodded, though she was something of unsure on what else to say.

"Brought your stuff back. Turns out your clothes, they don't fit too well on me."

Aubrey smiled, giving Angel the benefit of eye contact. "I suppose then you can carry that upstairs for me. I have a few hats that I think you might want back for the Fall."

He nodded in turn, but the conversation remained stilted like this. Like they were two people who had reset their understandings of each other back to zero. Perhaps because it was easier that way.

He followed her through the main entrance, across a landing with mail boxes and bikes chained up one side, and then up the stairs. Two flights and then another doorway which lead to a hallway and a row of apartment front doors. The hallways weren't long, Aubrey could always see her front door as soon as she opened that second entrance way. Which was why she stopped dead then, forcing Angel to bump into her and nearly drop her things.

"Aubrey?"

"Leave."

Angel's brow furrowed, and without consciously realising, he held onto the box a little tighter. "_Chica_, what—"

"I just remembered, you can't come in. My… cousin, she's visiting, from out of state. She's probably still asleep on the couch, I'd rather…" Aubrey shut the second door, shielding the hallway from Angel. "I'm sorry, I really am, but you have to leave."

"Aubrey, this ain't fair, we haven't spoken—"

"I'll call you."

"You won't."

"I might…"

Angel put down the box at her feet. He tipped his fedora down and turned away. "You won't. You girls, you never do."

And he left. Aubrey watched him go, standing so still as if frightened of making any noise, doing anything that would bring down a wrath of karma she knew she deserved. And then she remembered, she remembered that that wrath was waiting outside her front door right now.

_You._

She grabbed her things and shoved open the hallway door again, dropping her face into a deathly scowl, wishing she wasn't wearing a head band so she could shadow her face dramatically with bangs. Without much of a thought she marched up the hallway, stomped passed the neighbours' closed doors, and halted at her own, dropping the box at both their feet.

"Give me back my wallet."

There was a long silence after the demand, or what felt like a tumbling eternity, as Aubrey stared this personal devil of hers, willing her to break.

But she simply smiled.

She was leaning against the door, her arms crossed over a light windbreaker which only went to her narrow waist. She was still wearing a sweatband across her forehead, and it didn't look like she'd done anything to her hair since last night. But she'd done herself the courtesy of putting on jeans, as torn and grubby as they were.

Aubrey took a deep breath, rushed with conflict, but overwhelmingly tempted to grab the woman by the neck and throw her to the floor. Injured prides being dangerous things.

"I hear they pay a good price for you at that club. So was the twenty in my wallet really worth the charges I'm going to pull against you?"

She'd have been as well to reach out and slap her. The smile vanished, and the hazel of her eyes hardened, turning darker under a brow that quickly reshaped her slender face.

"Here," Emilia pulled a lump from a pocket in her windbreaker and threw it unceremoniously at Aubrey's head. Aubrey caught it reflectively.

"The twenty's still there, you can check. But when a girl runs out like that on you… It left me with a dirty choice, sure. Stole your wallet so I could find out where you live. And you might as well call the cops if that's what you're doing because that's the honest truth of the matter. I'm a freak. A frightening woman with no sentiment. I'm just selfish, I just wanted to take you out because I like looking at your face, and you have a pretty name, _Aubrey_."

Emilia jutted out her chin, crossed her arms, but she looked over Aubrey's shoulder, away from her eyes. A very slight dash of red crept across her dark cheeks and she chewed her lip as a dead silence grew between them. Aubrey held her wallet in both hands, unable to stop staring at this half-crazed woman standing on her doorstep.

Eventually, Emilia sighed. She brushed some hair back roughly from her eyes and shrugged a little too hard.

"Fine. You pretty girls are all the same anyway."

She lifted her head and began to walk away. The worn down heels on her ankle boots clicked rhythmically on the floor as she passed Aubrey, the air cold between them.

"Wait…" Aubrey pleaded suddenly.

Emilia took a few more steps, and then rocked to a slow stop on her heels, still facing the door out, shoulders up, back stiff.

"I… don't date girls."

It was like she had just shared fantastic joke. Emilia spun on her boots and faced Aubrey with a dark smirk.

"Well then... We'll go Dutch, remember not to invite me back for coffee after, absolutely no kissing... and I reckon we'll be fine from there."

Aubrey stared, mouth agape. "I- What?"

"We'll meet at The Doghouse, say eightish, wear something… comfortable."

"Comfortable?"

"See you tonight, Aubrey. Remember, no kissing."

And she turned again, waved, and left.

...


End file.
